Choosing Supplements - Part 1 of 2 - Categories

Thursday, November 11, 2010

By Karen Brothers, ND student, NCNM

Part 1 of 2: Supplement Categories

The market for nutritional supplements is huge, and numerous nutraceutical companies are vying for your attention as a consumer and/or prescriber. When choosing supplements for yourself, your patients, or your clients, what information should you consider? First, let’s take a look at what the supplement landscape looks like.

Available supplements fall into one of four categories.

Pure, isolated supplements. These supplements are synthetically produced in a lab and do not contain any plants or foods as their sources. Many of them contain ingredients derived from crushed rocks or petrochemicals. If you look at the label, you’ll see ingredient names like ascorbic acid, pyridoxal-5-phosphate, or dimagnesium malate. Pure supplements typically contain very high doses of nutrients, but the body’s ability to absorb and utilize the nutrients (i.e., the bioavailability of the nutrients) is not very high. Supplements in this category are often prescribed therapeutically.

Food-based supplements. Food-based supplements contain the pure nutrients described above mixed with varying amounts of food powders, food extracts, or botanicals. When you read the label of a food-based supplement, you’ll see the chemical names mentioned previously, but you’ll also see more readily recognizable names such as spinach powder or rice bran. The addition of food-based products increases the bioavailability of the nutrients over that of pure nutrients alone.

Biocultured supplements. These supplements contain food, botanicals, pure isolated nutrients, as well as cultured vitamins and minerals and fermented foods such as soy. As with food-based supplements, the bioavailability is higher than that of pure, isolated supplements. When you read the label, you should be aware that any pure nutrients that are included in the formula might not be listed. In addition, the fermentation and culturing processes may degrade some of the nutrients that you think you’re getting from a food source.

Whole food supplements. Whole food supplements contain 100 percent raw whole food. This means that the supplements contain not only the individual vitamins and minerals that you wish to take, but also the vital phytochemicals and cofactors that are present in food to enhance the body’s ability to utilize those nutrients. On the label, you’ll see food names such as carrots, oranges, brown rice, and broccoli. You may also see the name of the probiotic species in which food concentrates are grown under controlled conditions to maintain nutrient viability. Because our bodies recognize whole food supplements as food and not isolated nutrients, bioavailability is high and effective doses are low. These supplements are considered foundational and serve to prevent deficiencies that can lead to disease.

Now that you’re familiar with the categories of supplements, what else should you consider? Next Month – Part 2 of 2: Supplement Quality.

posted by Innate Response at

2:13 PM

Choosing Supplements - Part 1 of 2 - Categories

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